


Ramparts of the Vertical

by Maccabits



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Time, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens), Worried Aziraphale (Good Omens), theology is hawt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-08 17:55:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19475710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maccabits/pseuds/Maccabits
Summary: Aziraphale has much to sort through on the bus ride to Crowley's flat. Somehow, he manages.





	Ramparts of the Vertical

_Instead of the ramparts of the vertical, we might accept the pathway of the horizontal, finding the transcendent in the transitive, rather than the tower._

\- Stephen Clingman, "A Grammar of Identity."

It was difficult to know how to proceed. It was all very well to discover that for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, there had been a side that they’d both been on and that having more than two sides meant that there was an axis rather than a spectrum. Aziraphale felt that perhaps he and Crowley had advantageously plotted themselves within that axis by saving the world - by loving the world. But what form would their side actually _take_ in the next hours and days, as they tried to save themselves? And if they saved themselves for the time being, what then?

Ever since humanity’s Fall, his purpose as a Principality, and Crowley’s mission as a demon, had been to provide humans a range of options in their exertion of free will. It wasn’t that either of them was bad at his job; it was just that humans were so much better at it. Aziraphale and Crowley had agreed that this was how The Arrangement had originally come into being - it was a mutual acknowledgment that their work was, by-and-large, unnecessary in light of humanity’s vast inventiveness (and perversity). Though codified through The Arrangement, the ramifications of such an admission had been left mostly undiscussed between them, as so much else had been.

Case in point: It had not happened yet - but soon, perhaps tonight, the moment would come when, without the strictures of Heaven, he would have to reach for Crowley. He accepted the inevitability of this, and he also knew that Crowley would never initiate, but that he would most definitely reciprocate. (He felt an involuntary shudder of pleasure in even thinking of just how Crowley might reciprocate). Every time Crowley’s lips would meet his, every time they would move together to touch as much of each other as they could manage all at once, it would be an erasure of who they were. After all, were they not both defined by Heaven’s verdict of what could, and could not, be touched? As he constantly reminded Crowley: Aziraphale was an angel, and he was a demon, and a world of difference lay in between. Through the act of co-mingling their lives’ purpose, by preventing the Apocalypse together, and inevitably, by the act of reaching for each other - he would no longer be an angel, and Crowley no longer a demon.

Aziraphale recalled that, so long ago, a silver lining in the Fall of Lucifer was that the Heavenly Host had gained a way by which to define themselves through the creation of an Other. Satan, demons, evil... he remembered feeling quite heady about it when it happened; instead of minuscule gradations of difference, a whole different palette of definition became possible. How glorious white looked - against black.

He had gotten the better end of the deal. Being on the side of Good allows the luxury of not having to overthink things. Relegated to the category of Evil, Crowley’s identity was more complicated; he had to exaggerate his deeds to Hell (and to himself) to make it work. It’s why Crowley was so tetchy about being called nice. “Nice” was a challenge to the story he'd fashioned for himself as a louche demon with a fast car and a Brutalist apartment full of scared houseplants.

Of course, Aziraphale had struggled to fit in, too; flaming sword-gifting aside, he had tried to be a Heavenly Host pleaser, a rule follower, with any unorthodox thoughts collected in his books, not his head. Crowley never challenged the truth of Aziraphale's persona directly; however he sometimes smirked at the one-dimensionality of it. He knew Aziraphale wasn't so simple. If he were, he wouldn't be sitting next to him right now because in no way was any of this simple.

The bus continued to hurtle towards London, and Aziraphale's mind kept pace. And then, as the bus dropped them off at the demon's building entrance, he said to himself, very quietly, "Enough." 

Without further comment, he followed Crowley in and out of the lift and into the flat.

“Angel, I’ll take the sofa,” Crowley said first thing after closing the door behind them. He quickly poured a measure of whiskey for them both, and out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale noticed a sofa that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“No, dear. Well... there’s no point, is there?” he asked, haltingly.

“Isn’t there?” Crowley replied, mystified. And then, “Mmpf!” as Aziraphale - tenderly, firmly, hungrily - took his hand in his own and led him to the bedroom.

Unchecked, the physical sensations would have been overwhelming, but the angel had learned long ago how to relegate messages from the body to a distinct (if pleasurable) compartment within. What he found truly unforeseen, as he pressed against Crowley, was that he could feel, not just his defenses lowering, but difference receding. He could not tell where Crowley left off and he began, and there was something so joyous in the acceptance of such co-mingling at the point of liminality. In a mad flash, he felt he just might have intuited the gist of the Ineffable Plan: It was the traversing of distance between oneself and the Other, only to discover that the distance was illusory, but the journey there absolutely real. For Aziraphale, the Ineffable Plan was distilled in the expression on Crowley’s face in one perfect moment, as accurately as it was ever recorded in any of Agnes Nutter’s prophecies.

After a time, they rested.

And then, Aziraphale spoke softly into the demon’s ear. “I may have an idea,” he said.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

His next idea came to him at the Ritz, after one of their numerous celebratory toasts. He leaned over to Crowley and studied the eyes behind the dark lenses. “Crowley, we'll need something to _do_ with ourselves now... a purpose." Crowley sat very still.

He continued, "I think that you should grow a great big garden,” he said. “And I should have some animals, some lovely sheep and cows and bees. We can be farmers. Together.”

“That’s not very original, Angel,” Crowley said, relieved but also thinking the idea would play Hell with his shoes.

“Actually, dear, I do believe it was rather the Original idea," Aziraphale said, thoughtfully.


End file.
